(Tape #1 with Harmon Wright. Recorded in his office on the 12th floor at HWA on February 25. It is decorated in French provincial antique furniture, which appears genuine. He is tall, wiry, tanned. Hair is white. Wears gold-framed glasses, Brooks Brothers gray flannel suit.)
HOAG: I APPRECIATE YOUR giving me this time.
Wright: Anything for Artie. He called, by the way. Told me to hold nothing back.
Hoag: Terrific. He’s already filled me in on your old neighborhood, on the Seetags—
Wright: The what? Oh, our old club. Sure.
Hoag: And on your past associations …
Wright: Associations? Did he bring up that old Benny Siegel business?
Hoag: Yes, he did.
Wright: Take what Artie says with a grain of salt. I was never in jail, or technically in the actual employ of Benny Siegel. I knew him. But lots of people did.
Hoag: What about the money?
Wright: Money?
Hoag: He told me about the money you siphoned off to start this agency. Should I take that with a grain of salt, too?
Wright: (silence) When is this book coming out anyway?
Hoag: Next fall, probably. I’ll take that as a yes. You were out here in Los Angeles when they were filming At Ease?
Wright: I was fresh out of law school and interested in getting into the field of talent management. Artie and I happened to bump into each other on the lot. Naturally, I was surprised as hell. I mean, Mel Rabinowitz’s fat kid brother—who would have figured? But I watched some of the filming, and I was very impressed. They had something, those two kids. They were like Abbott and Costello, only with class. Gabe had the class. Artie … Artie was a comic genius. You know they never had a flop? Every picture they made together made money.
Hoag: What happened when they got out of the service?
Wright: I grabbed Jack Warner by the short and curlies and didn’t let go. He wanted to sign them to three pictures at $25,000 per. I said one picture, for $50,000, then we cut a new deal. He called me a fucking greaseball a couple times and hung up on me. I waited for him to come crawling back. I waited one day. Two days. Three days. I was gambling with their future, but I figured, worse comes to worst, I’ll put them on the nightclub circuit. I was about to do just that when Warner came crawling. Gabe and Lorraine rented a little house in Studio City. Lovely girl. Wasn’t suited for the show business life. Artie took an apartment in Encino. And they made BMOC, their college picture. That’s where he and Connie met. It was a good picture. First one to use their theme song. As soon as they wrapped it, I put them together with a top writing team and they came up with a new act. Civilian material. They did personal appearances to push the picture, then turned right around and did the nightclubs. As headliners, too. Only the top clubs—the Chase in St. Louis, Chez Paree in Chicago, Latin Casino in Philly. Sold out every night. Pulling down $3,500 a week. By the time they hit New York it was official—BMOC was outgrossing At Ease. People loved these boys. I booked them into the Copa for two weeks at $5,000 per. They stayed eight weeks. You couldn’t get near the place. Even the big-timers had to pull strings to get in. Jack Warner was panting now. Wanted to sign them up for three pictures for $175,000. I tell him the price is now a half million. Again with the greaseball stuff. So I sent them to the Flamingo. They were one of the first name acts to play there—helped legitimize the place. They played four weeks at $10,000 per. Only, Artie left more than that in the casino. So I brought them back to L.A. and booked them into Slapsie Maxie’s. Place was packed with movie people every night. Every studio in town wanted them now. I got the deal I wanted. And I got it from Jack Warner. Their third picture for him, Jerks, was another smash. From then on, for the next ten years, the sky was the limit for them. The money came in so fast they were, I think, overwhelmed by it. Remember, they were still boys. Just like today with the rock stars and the tennis players. One day they’re a couple snot-nosed kids from some neighborhood. Next day they’re pulling down what was the equivalent of twenty million a year today. And Artie, he was everybody’s darling, could do no wrong. He started getting crazy with the ego stuff, the competition. They were telling him he was Charlie Chaplin, for God’s sake. Whatever Gabe did, Artie had to do better. If Gabe built a new house with six bathrooms, Artie had to build one with seven.
Hoag: Did they socialize? Were they friends?
Wright: No. Gabe liked to move in the A crowd. Artie liked to have a lot of hangers-on around to laugh at everything he said. His boys, he called them. Then after they had their first big row, the blood was always bad between them. It was strictly business after that.
Hoag: Their first big row?
Wright: You don’t know about that? Okay, this was 1949,I think. Maybe ’50. Artie got into serious financial trouble. Big house. Cars. Gambling, like I said. Plus he supported his mom, his entourage, and he was a soft touch. If somebody needed help with hospital bills, you never met a more generous guy. Trouble was, he wasn’t paying his taxes. The IRS nailed him for close to half a million. So you know what his solution was? He asked for sixty percent of the take. Everybody kept telling him he carried Gabe. So he figured he should make more. Gabe’s response was—fuck you. Gabe had his pride. He was a professional. You think he liked reading in the paper that he was a stiff? You think he liked Artie rubbing it in? For a week the two of them didn’t speak. Finally Artie backed down and apologized. Then he turned right around and said if he wasn’t going to get more money, then he wanted his name first. Day and Knight. Again Gabe told him to fuck off. It was like that between them from then on. Always. During the whole TV series they were at each other’s throats. I remember we were at dinner one night—I had to fly to New York to try to calm things down between them—and Artie ordered a steak and the waiter said, “And for your vegetable?” Artie said, “He’ll have the same as me.” Gabe walked out of the restaurant.
Hoag: This went on while they were working, too?
Wright: Artie was a monster on the set. Drove people hard. Made them crazy. Gabe was a nice, easy-going guy. Artie hated that Gabe was more popular on the set than he was. So he demanded more credit. He insisted on a head writing-credit on the series. He got it, too. And he would undermine Gabe. If they had a musical guest on, and Gabe was doing a nice duet with him, Artie’d come out on stage and heckle them. Ruin the number. For laughs, of course. But it made Gabe seethe. I remember he used to say to me, I won’t go down to his level. Finally he recorded his own album of songs to keep himself sane. It did very well. That drove Artie crazy. After that, they only spoke to each other through the producers, or me. Each would cry his heart out to me. It went on for years. I earned my cut, let me tell you.
Hoag: But they stayed together?
Wright: Underneath, there was a deep relationship there. I don’t know, they needed each other. Artie more than Gabe, actually. His work was never as good after they split up.
Hoag: He thinks the public just wasn’t ready for it.
Wright: He’s right. They weren’t ready for total shit. (silence) Artie was trying to prove he never needed Gabe. Prove it to the world. Prove it to himself. He lost touch with his character. Lost his confidence. A comic without his confidence it’s like a tightrope walker getting scared of heights. He drove his writers away. His friends. Drank too much. Saddest thing was when he broke Connie’s heart with that no-good tramp Tracy. Every producer and leading man in town had jerked off on her chest. Sonny, he married her. I remember one night my lovely wife Ruthie and I went to dinner with them at Scandia. Through the entire meal he’d stop the conversation, cup Tracy’s face in his hand like she was a three-year-old and say, “Is this a face?” After he did it for the thirtieth time I grabbed Ruthie’s face and said, “Whattaya call this, Artie, a sack of shit?” He didn’t speak to me for months. Not until she dumped him. Then he called me up in the middle of the night and cried. Artie and I … we’ve been through a lot together. I was never as close to Gabe. He was harder to get to know. And he left the agency after they split up for good. Financially, I got the short end. The joke was on me. A fucking ambassador …
Hoag: Can you tell me why it happened? What the famed, mysterious fight at Chasen’s was about?
Wright: No mystery to it at all. They were sick to death of each other. They’d been together day and night—no pun intended—for more than fifteen years. They hated each other’s guts. It happens.
Hoag: That’s it? There’s nothing more to it than that?
Wright: That’s all it takes. When did you say this book is coming out?
Hoag: Next fall, probably. Say, you may not realize it, but I happen to be one of your clients myself.
Wright: You don’t say. Small world. What did you say your name was again?
(end tape)
(Tape #1 with Connie Morgan. Recorded February 26 in her dressing room at the Burbank Studio, where she is filming the TV series Santa Fe. She knits a muffler.)
Morgan: It’s Arthur’s birthday present. I couldn’t finish it in time. It’s an exact copy of the scarf he wore in BMOC.
Hoag: He’ll be thrilled. What happened to the original?
Morgan: Wardrobe took it back.
Hoag: I seem to remember he also wore a beanie cap in that.
Morgan: Yes, he did. That he kept.
Hoag: Do you happen to remember where?
Morgan: Where? In a trunk someplace, I believe. He’d know where it is, if you’re really interested in seeing it.
Hoag: Do you remember his having a dummy of himself?
Morgan: (laughs) In his office, of course. Gabe threw it off a cliff. (silence) You’ve gotten awfully serious.
Hoag: Do you know what happened to it?
Morgan: Is it important?
Hoag: Possibly.
Morgan: Someone stole it off the lot. How are you two getting on?
Hoag: We have our ups and downs.
Morgan: One does.
Hoag: He’s unpredictable.
Morgan: Arthur learned long ago that he can keep people off guard that way. Make them accommodate him. If you’re wondering when you’ll hit the core …
Hoag: I am.
Morgan: I’ve known him forty years and I’m not sure I have.
Hoag: You met on BMOC.
Morgan: Yes. I’d had a few bits, but it was my first real part. A scout had seen me in a play at the University of Virginia. I came out here for a test and Warners put me under contract.
Hoag: First impressions?
Morgan: I remember Gabe seemed very nice. He was a polite young man, very handsome, a bit stunned by what was happening to them. He was inclined to be modest about it. Arthur was the opposite. He never stopped bragging or jumping up and down or cracking a joke. He had as much energy as three people. He was almost like a little boy, the way he was constantly looking for approval. To this day, I’ve never met anyone who so badly needs approval.
Hoag: Were you attracted to him?
Morgan: It was more … You see, I was essentially playing myself in BMOC. I was a campus beauty queen at Virginia. Boys had always stammered when they talked to me. Or tried to put a move on me. Or just stared. Arthur, he teased me right from the beginning. Badgered me, called me names such as Bones and Stretch. He treated me like absolute garbage, in the sweetest possible way of course. I loved it. Finally, after about a week of shooting, he came up to me on the set and said, “Listen, Bones, me and Gabe and a few of d’udders decided youse is an unstable pain in the behind and somebody’s gonna have to give ya a good fucking or the picture's goin’ inta the toilet.”
Hoag: You’re kidding.
Morgan: It’s true. I swear. He said, “So’s we drew straws.” I said, “And you won?” And he said, “No, I lost!” If it had been anybody else, I’d have slugged him. But Arthur … it was his way of saying I think you’re pretty terrific and I wish I had the nerve to ask you out.
Hoag: You went out with him.
Morgan: I hadn’t met too many nice guys. One doesn’t here. And I wouldn’t go to the parties. He took me to Ocean Park. We went on the rides. We ate cotton candy. I felt as if I were back in high school. He was so nervous he never stopped talking. He talked about how much money he was going to make. He talked about how he was going to bring his mother out. He talked about—
Hoag: His father?
Morgan: No. Not for months. Not until he was absolutely positive I loved him. At the end of our first evening together he fell to his knees and proposed to me. He did that every single time we saw each other, which got to be more and more often. I finally said yes about six months later, when he and Gabe were on the road. Gabe was his best man.
Hoag: Were you happy together?
Morgan: At first, yes. He adored me. I thought he was the sweetest man in the world. Plus, life was more fun when Sonny Day was around. The problem got to be that he wasn’t around enough. He and Gabe were either shooting a movie fourteen hours a day or they were on the road. And Arthur was very old-fashioned. Once Wanda was born, he insisted I quit the business and stay home to raise her. So I was stuck at home with his mother, who moved in with us when we bought our first house in Pacific Palisades.
Hoag: Did you get along with her?
Morgan: As well as anyone could. She was a nasty, horrible woman. I hate to say it, but it’s the truth.
Hoag: I didn’t get that impression from him.
Morgan: One wouldn’t. But she never stopped picking on him, belittling him, telling him what a bum his father had been and how he was no better.
Hoag: When did the two of you start having problems?
Morgan: Pretty early on. I wanted more from him. I wanted a relationship. But I was little more than a trophy for Arthur. He preferred to spend his free time with his boys—playing cards, going to the racetrack. And when he was in Vegas with Gabe, they … they slept with women. Many women. I caught him once when he came back. He left a package of condoms out on his dresser. Maybe so I’d catch him. I was furious. He started crying. He said he didn’t deserve me, that he was born in the gutter and belonged there. He offered to move out. He even started to pack. He made me beg him to stay. And I did, even though I was the injured party.
Hoag: The other women—you were jealous?
Morgan: Of course, though he insisted most of the time he didn’t even want them, that they wanted him, and that he couldn’t get over that. He’s very insecure about his appearance. Gabe was the one who was conquest-minded. If he saw a pretty girl walk by in a restaurant—Lorraine sitting right there with him, mind you—he’d excuse himself, intercept her in the lounge, and get her phone number. Arthur would never do something like that. Lorraine didn’t take it for very long. She divorced Gabe after two years.
Hoag: Did you consider divorcing Sonny back then?
Morgan: I was brought up to believe that if there were problems with a marriage, they were the woman’s fault. It took me a lot of years to get past that. And then there was Wanda to consider. Do you know what he wanted to name her? Stormy. Stormy Day. I had to put my foot down. She was a happy baby. A beautiful baby. You’ve never seen a man love a child as much as he loved Wanda. When she began to walk, we moved down to Malibu so he could take her for walks on the beach in the morning before he left for the studio. He’d go down there at dawn and sprinkle shells along the sand for her to find—just so he could see the look of delight on her face. I think she was the only real joy in his life. He was devastated when she began to have problems.
Hoag: Which was when?
Morgan: After we moved back from New York. She was about eight. She became sullen and withdrawn. Cried a lot. The doctors thought it was from having such an unstable home life moving back and forth cross-country, her father gone so often, and such an up-and-down presence when he was around. Arthur was convinced it was his fault, that he was somehow getting what he deserved. Totally self-centered response, of course.
Hoag: Tell me about the move to New York.
Morgan: I was for it. I thought if he did the series he’d be home more. At least it meant thirty-nine weeks out of the year he wouldn’t be on the road. Becoming a big TV star in New York was more a fulfillment of Arthur’s fantasies than anything he ever did. He lived in the Waldorf. He got the best tables at the best nightclubs. He got his name in the newspaper columns right next to Caesar, to Berle, to Gleason. He was in heaven.
Hoag: And you?
Morgan: I didn’t like living in a hotel. He suggested we get a place in Connecticut, where we could unwind. I found us a lovely little cottage on a few acres. The idea was he’d come out on weekends. Only there were no weekends. We owned the place for three years and he never saw it. Not once. Wanda and I lived there by ourselves. She started school there. He stayed in the city, working eighteen hours a day, nightclubbing the other six. And then when he and Gabe had their thirteen weeks off in the summer, it was back to L.A. to do a movie. I’d say to him, why don’t you let up, why do you drive yourself so hard? He’d say, “I gotta grab it while I can, baby.”
Hoag: So you hardly ever saw him.
Morgan: Or talked to him. When he called me at the farm, it was to ask about Wanda or kvetch about Gabe. They fought over money, over billing, over everything. Arthur never understood that Gabe had feelings. After four seasons, Gabe couldn’t take doing the series anymore. Arthur couldn’t keep up the pace either. He pushed himself so hard he put himself in the hospital. So they quit the show. We all moved back to Malibu. That’s when things really started to turn bad.
Hoag: How so?
Morgan: Wanda, as I mentioned. And Arthur’s mother died. That seemed to set Arthur loose. He started running with a rougher crowd. He became big pals with Frank Sinatra, who is not a positive influence on any man. And he had his first serious affair. It was with a young bombshell-slash-actress named Jayne Mansfield. He met her in New York. One thing led to another. This was different than what had gone on before. This was a steady thing that went on for several months. I read about their affair in a gossip column. He didn’t deny it. We went through the ritual of his packing his bags again, only this time I didn’t beg him to stay. He moved into a hotel for a while. Until they broke up. Then I took him back. For Wanda’s sake. But by then our marriage was a complete travesty. We went more than two years without having sex.
Hoag: He told me.
Morgan: You’re referring to the talk you two had in Vegas about your sexual dysfunction. He’s very excited and proud that you confided in him. He hasn’t many close friends anymore.
Hoag: He said you had become more of a mother to him.
Morgan: He rebelled against me. Began to run around with the trampiest girls in town. For a long time I put up with it. So many other things kept us together. There was Wanda’s condition. There was his breakup with Gabe. He worked even harder after that—writing, directing. Then he took up with Tracy. She was that year’s hot sex kitten—1965, I think it was. He flaunted it. He had his picture taken in the newspaper, nibbling on her ear in some nightclub. He took her to Vegas with him. That was it for me. I wasn’t going to pick up the pieces for him anymore. I moved out. I offered a home to Wanda, but we’d lost control of her by then. She moved in with that French director and began to support herself as a model. She was all of eighteen. I went back to work. It was a frightening, difficult time for me, but I survived. I enjoy my work. I guess it’s my life now. People magazine voted me America’s favorite mom last year, did you know that? It’s silly, I suppose, but it’s the biggest honor I’ve ever gotten.
Hoag: About Sonny and Gabe. Can we talk about their breakup?
Morgan: What about it?
Hoag: The fight in Chasen’s, to be specific.
Morgan: (silence) I’ve given that a lot of thought.
Hoag: And?
Morgan: My feeling is if Arthur wants to put it in his book, it’s his decision. But he’ll have to be the one to reveal it. I’m not going to talk to you about it.
Hoag: Why?
Morgan: Because I’d rather it never come out.
Hoag: Harmon Wright said it was nothing more than the fact they were sick of each other.
Morgan: Harmon Wright is paid to say things like that.
(end tape)
(Tape #6 with Sonny Day. Recorded in his study, February 27.)
Day: Vic keeps bugging me about the time he clocked that guy in the Daisy Club. Whattaya think, should it go in the book?
Hoag: Not if it will hurt him. Why? Do you have a strong feeling?
Day: I wanna use it. I got a lot of bad press over that. I don’t wanna hurt him, neither. He knows that. Just gotta know how to handle him. So what’d Heshie and Connie say about me?
Hoag: Want to hear the tapes?
Day: No, I’ll wait for the paperback.
Hoag: I got the impression you were pretty crazed.
Day: Not pretty crazed. Crazed. Work. Booze. Pills. Girls. I’ll tell you something though—know what drove me the most in those days? Fear. Fear that it would disappear and I’d be right back where I was before the war. So I pushed, pushed, pushed. Everybody started calling me Little Hitler. Cussing me out behind my back. Sure, I started getting involved in the writing. Why not? It was my ass on the line. Sure, I wanted credit for it. Who wouldn’t? Sure, I wanted more money than Gabe. Why not? I was there all day, knocking heads with the writers, trying to make it work. He was playing golf. Or recording an album behind my back. They said I kept a lot of my boys on the payroll. Bullshit. I was giving some young writers a break. Three of ’em have gone on to win Emmys so far. They said I needed to be surrounded by stooges. Bullshit. Who says I can’t pick my own friends? Give some putz a newspaper column and he thinks it gives him the right to psychoanalyze ya. Judge ya. I was living out the American dream. What’s wrong with that? Okay, I built this huge place. I owned twelve cars. A few extra pairs of shoes. So what? I earned ’em. I didn’t hurt nobody. I didn’t judge nobody. But they judged me. They said I was ego mad. They said I was a fucking nut. They said I couldn’t get along with Gabe. Sure, Gabe and I fought. Who doesn’t? Abbott and Costello fought. The Ritz brothers fought. Martin and fucking Lewis fought. Anytime you care, anytime you got something at stake, you fight. It’s easy to get along when you’re both going nowhere. It’s a breeze. Ya can sit around together broke and agree about everything. Every single fucking … (silence) Sorry, Hoagy. Whew, all I need is the two metal balls, huh?
Hoag: Next birthday.
Day: Plant looks great out there. Love sitting here and looking at it.
Hoag: I’m glad.
Day: Besides, me and Gabe didn’t fight all the time. Especially early on. That first public appearance tour, after BMOC came out. The kids went crazy. They’d rush the stage. They’d hang around outside the hotel, waiting for us to come out. We’d put on disguises and slip right by ’em. One time I dressed up like Marlene Dietrich. Some salesman tried to pick me up in the elevator. I clobbered him with my purse. Knocked him right on his keister. Gabe, he’d dress up like an old man. White wig. Cane. It was fun. But the real fun was Vegas. Vegas was always laughs. No wives. Gambling. Booze. Broads. We’d go up to the rooms and have horror shows like you wouldn’t believe. You name it, we did it. And on stage, we was dynamite. We came up with some new routines—about our childhoods, about being young fathers. Whatever we tried, it worked. And the movies just kept pulling ’em in. Jerks. Then Hayride. Ship to Shore. We couldn’t miss. Except at home. Lorraine dumped Gabe. Connie kept complaining I wasn’t around enough, that she felt stifled and ignored. And I didn’t get to see enough of Wanda. She was such a joy to me, a little blond bundle of joy. She was so lovely, in such a fragile kinda way. I was afraid she’d crack if I squeezed her too tight. I wished I could be around her more.
Hoag: That’s partly why you did the TV show in New York?
Day: That was for blood money. I owed the IRS. What the hell—I had it, I spent it. Gabe got socked by Lorraine for an alimony you wouldn’t believe. They gave us a fortune to do that show. We never saw a dime of it, neither of us. But I had this thing in my mind you wasn’t a real success until you licked New York. And the guys who were big in TV there—Caesar, Berle—they was taken a lot more seriously by critics than me and Gabe. Us, we was considered lowbrow. Anyway, we was approached in—I guess it was ’51—about doing this comedy-variety thing for Lucky Strikes on CBS. It was a helluva deal, so we went back East and we licked New York. Did great stuff on that show. Better than Broadway, and a new one every week. Got great ratings, too. Only problem was the critics still hated us.
Hoag: It was done live?
Day: No retakes. You wanna talk pressure? Hoo, boy. Know where we did it? The same theater on West Fifty-third where the army sent us when we joined You’re in the Army. That was home for the next four years. We had suites at the Waldorf where we’d pass out for a couple of hours, but we lived at that theater. I’m still proud of that show. We had top people. Goody Ace was our head writer. We hired him away from Berle. Later on, we brought in John Grant when he split up with Abbott and Costello. We had Selma Diamond writing for us, god rest her soul. I bought the first sketch Woody Allen ever sold to TV—about a guy with a mother complex who’s in love with his lady analyst. Peggy Cass played both parts. Fucking hysterical. What a troupe we had. Me, Gabe, Peggy, Dick Van Dyke—who was practically still in diapers—Freddy Gwynn, Morty Gunty, god rest his soul. And guest stars like you wouldn’t believe. Basil Rathbone. Ronald Colman. I remember one time we had Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester on, and we made ’em do a nursery-school sketch with us where we all crawled around on our hands and knees. We’d have a musical guest, too. Ethel Merman, Patti Page. Gabe’d do a couple of numbers with ’em. We’d work ’em into the sketches if we could. It was wild. We’d have a format, but this was live. Halfway into the hour the format went right out the window. A couple of times we ran out of time right in the middle of something. Mitch Miller, our bandleader, he’d go into our theme song and that was it—off the air we went, still talking. I’d want to collapse, but I was too wired. So I’d hit Lindy’s. Every time I walked in I’d spritz Gleason with a seltzer bottle. Pretty soon it got so he’s carrying a water pistol so he’d be ready for it. We’d go at it right there in the restaurant, like kids. Then Silvers got one. We were like gunslingers. The three of us even talked about doing a western picture together—Last Stand at Lindy’s. After Lindy’s we’d all hit the Copa, the Trocadero, the Stork, finish off with a steak at Danny’s at about five a.m. I’d pass out for two hours, show up Tuesday morning—exhausted, hung over—and guess what? We got a whole new show to do, and nothing but blank pages staring at us.
Hoag: Your relationship with Gabe deteriorated?
Day: We didn’t talk. It bothered both of us, but we couldn’t seem to live any other way. Then he met Vicki, his second wife. Suddenly, he don’t want to work so hard. We did fight about that. The staff and the crew took Gabe’s side, even though I was the one putting food in their mouths while he was off making records. This happened—let’s see—this was the third season. I was seriously crazed by then. Drinking a bottle a night. Taking pills to sleep, to wake up. Eating like a horse. I was totally excessive. In everything. It finally broke me in the fourth season. I collapsed right on the air. People laughed. They thought it was a gag. I was dying. Had to be taken to the hospital. I was in bed for a month with double pneumonia. Gabe went on every week with a pinch-hit costar-Jimmy Durante did one, Red Skelton. When I came back, I swore I’d take better care of myself, but right away I was back to my old habits. And me and Gabe, we’d had it with the grind. We just couldn’t keep it up anymore. That was the only thing we could agree on. So we went out with our heads high. Moved back to California.
Hoag: According to Connie, that’s when your life …
Day: My life turned to shit.
(end tape)